The Canadian Blood Services registry believes such an archive can be extremely useful by cataloging 10,000 samples from an ethnically-diverse group of Canadians, which it could then maintain for about $2.5 million a year.
Donated cords would become the property of the state under the program, becoming distributed to those who need the tissue the most.
The blood clinic would allegedly bring Canada up a notch in health care around the world, according to a Bone Marrow Transplant Group official, speaking after a summit on stem cell research.
Leukemia patients are very likely to benefit from the scheme, where stem cell treatment has been widely used to regenerate bone marrow loss. Cells from a leukemia patient's own stem cells could cause the disease to recur in the patient, though it is believed that public stem cells could stop the disease from coming back.
Only two public umbilical cord banks exist currently in Canada; in Alberta and Quebec. The average cost per customer is $1,000 to open an account and another $120 per year to maintain the client's sample.
